HHS offers help for people who miss Obamacare deadline

People who can’t finish the online signup for Obamacare health insurance by midnight Tuesday because of problems with HealthCare.gov and a surge of last-minute shoppers can seek extra time to finalize their application and still get covered by Jan. 1, the Obama administration said Tuesday afternoon.

It’s the latest in a series of extensions granted by the administration, which is making a final push to enroll people in coverage taking effect next week.

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Officials have repeatedly delayed deadlines and announced extra accommodations to maximize enrollment, but the moves also risk increased confusion among consumers. They also expose the administration to further criticism from Obamacare opponents, who say all the last minute changes are indications of the law’s failure.

“We don’t want you to miss out if you’ve been trying to enroll,” according to a Tuesday message posted on the federal enrollment website. People who ran into “delays caused by heavy traffic to HealthCare.gov, maintenance periods, or other issues with our systems” will have more time, Health and Human Services said. “We may be able to help you get covered as soon as January 1.”

Officials stressed that the extra time is only for people who had started enrollment before the Dec. 24 deadline and ran into obstacles. Anyone who applies after the Dec. 24 deadline would be eligible for coverage starting in February, not January. Open enrollment runs through March.

Federal health officials have informed insurers that exceptions and assistance will be given to people who “legitimately tried to apply” on the website and couldn’t finish by the Dec. 24 deadline, an insurance source said. Tuesday’s announcement isn’t meant to be a blanket extension of a deadline that’s already been pushed back twice, the source said.

Insurers, though, are still trying to grasp the administration’s latest deadline maneuver. They expect to get fuller details about the precise breadth of the policy in a call with officials on Thursday.

The federal call center will be closed on Christmas, as planned, and then reopen Thursday. For those requiring more time to complete enrollment for Jan. 1, the feds have developed “a robust casework process to address individual inquiries, respond to specific situations, and help consumers transition to new coverage,” Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Communications Director Julie Bataille wrote in an agency update.

Millions of people have gone this week to the state and federal health exchange websites and still confronted some problems getting through on the sites — especially HealthCare.gov — and long waits for help from the federal call center. The federal portal hasn’t crashed, but it’s not known how many people have encountered difficulty as they tried to find out if they get a subsidy, choose from multiple health plan choices, and finish enrollment.

The original deadline to apply for Jan. 1 coverage was Dec. 15, but the administration last month pushed it to Dec. 23 to make up for some of the time lost to the many issues after the website’s October launch. The administration on Monday again extended it to midnight Christmas Eve to accommodate the last-minute surge in applicants.

About 2 million people visited HealthCare.gov on Monday, and more than 250,000 people called the federal help line, according to CMS. More than 129,000 people on Monday provided emails to CMS to be notified when they could come back to the website when it wasn’t as busy, and each received an email Monday.

Traffic on Tuesday was not as high as on Monday, CMS said, and the agency has not had to activate the site’s virtual waiting room for particularly busy times.

“We are taking thousands of calls at our call centers, which remain open until midnight, and we are seeing thousands of visitors complete enrollment online,” CMS’s Bataille wrote.

States also reported continuing high interest on Tuesday. Colorado’s exchange, for one, said that nearly 43,000 people had signed up for health coverage, with 5,354 choosing a health plan Monday. The state has given residents until Friday to shop for coverage beginning on New Year’s Day.

Some state-run exchanges that have experienced technical enrollment problems have also extended their sign-up deadlines. Massachusetts residents now have until Dec. 31.